The move “marks a major escalation” in the Ukrainian
crisis, CNN said.

“Three US officials confirmed to me a short time ago that US
intelligence over the last 48 hours has monitored the firing of
several short-range ballistic missiles from territory controlled
by Ukraine government forces into areas controlled by the
pro-Russian separatists,” Barbara Starr, CNN’s Pentagon
correspondent, said in a live report.

Short-range ballistic missiles can carry warheads of up to 1,000
pounds (450 kg) and are capable of killing dozens of people at a
time, Starr said.

A Moscow correspondent for another American television network,
ABC, tweeted Tuesday that the Kiev forces fired three ballistic
missiles at self-defense forces near the town of Snezhnoe
(Snizhne in Ukrainian) in the Donetsk Region. According to Kirit
Radia, this is what a US official told ABC’s Pentagon digital
journalist Luis Martinez.

In last 48 hours Ukraine's military fired 3 SS21 short range
ballistic missiles at separatists near Snizhne, US official
tells @LMartinezABC

The CNN gave no details regarding the exact missiles’ launch and
impact point.

“In fact, the US is holding this information right now fairly
tightly, officials say, because they are in an awkward position:
these are, you know, the so-called ‘good guys’ firing ballistic
missiles, Ukraine government forces,” Starr said on air.

So far, there has been no official reaction from Kiev and Moscow.
The question now is how Washington – which has strongly backed
the Kiev government – will comment on the revelations, CNN’s
correspondent said.

Earlier this week, the US State Department released satellite images via email which it said
act as “evidence” that Russia was firing rockets at Ukrainian
troops across the border. Russia’s Defense Ministry stated
in response that the “fake” images were
created by American advisers “with close links to Ukraine’s
Security Council.”

“Will we see the satellite imagery of the Ukrainians firing
against the separatists? That may be a very tricky political
question for the US intelligence community today,” CNN’s
Starr said.

However, CNN’s correspondent in Donetsk, Nick Paton Walsh, said
he had heard nothing of ballistic launches in the area and
nothing of that kind has been openly discussed. He added, though,
that it is no secret that both sides of the conflict were using
“very heavy weaponry” against each other.

Russian military experts say that if the Ukrainian military did
use ballistic missiles, most likely they would be Tochka-U (NATO
Designation SS-21 Scarab).

Viktor Murakhovsky told RT that the military possibly used the
missile against a fixed target, such as the militia’s staff
headquarters.

“I’m talking about the Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile on
a wheeled chassis, which the Ukrainian army has in its arsenal.
It’s a Soviet-designed and produced missile. It may have a
high-explosive fragmentation warhead or a disintegrating
warhead,” Murakhovsky said.

Anatoly Tsyganok, the head of the Military Forecasting Center in
Moscow, agreed that the Ukrainian army could have used the
Tochka-U missile.

The news broke amid growing tensions between Washington and
Moscow over the ongoing violent confrontation in Ukraine.

The US, giving strong backing to the Kiev government, has
repeatedly accused Russia of supporting anti-government forces in
east Ukraine and supplying them with arms – an accusation Russia
has strongly denied. Last week, US government officials claimed
that Russia was firing artillery across the border into Ukrainian
territory, but refused to provide any hard evidence besides some
pictures captured by a civilian satellite, which were rebuffed by
Russia’s Defense Ministry.

So far the US has failed to back its statements with any
trustworthy proof, mainly referring to some images, “commons
sense” and social media.

Charges and counter charges between the two powers have been
boiling following the tragic accident with Malaysian Airlines
Boeing-777 that crashed in Ukraine on July 17. The very next day
after the incident, long before experts arrived at the scene and
a probe was launched, President Barack Obama said that America
had “increasing confidence” that the plane was shot down
by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from
militia-controlled territory. US intelligence said later that it
found no direct link between Russia and the plane disaster. But,
still, the blame-game continued with Russia being accused of
“creating conditions” that led to the incident.

A fresh bunch of accusations were thrown at Moscow on Tuesday,
with Obama stating that Russia was not cooperating with the
international investigation of the plane crash.

Russia on the contrary has been calling for a transparent and
impartial investigation of the tragedy from the very beginning.
Russia’s Defense Ministry presented its own evidence on the movements
of Ukrainian military before and after the tragedy, including
surface-to-air missile systems, and a fighter jet that had been
tracking the civilian aircraft. During the press conference,
Russian military posed a number of questions to Kiev
and Washington answers to which could shed light on what really
happened on that day and help the international investigation.
Those questions however were left unanswered with western media
and politicians instead blaming Russia of not willing to use its
“influence” on anti-Kiev forces whom they accused of
hampering the investigation despite the fact that it was Kiev’s
forces who intensified the military operation in the direct
vicinity of the crash site.

On Tuesday however, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko finally
said that Kiev is ready for a cease-fire at the MH17 crash site, as
was demanded by the UN Security Council resolution on July 21.
The local militia in the meantime confirmed they were ready to
further cooperate with international experts investigating the
crash.